Song obsessions are those songs that we listen to on repeat. I noticed that my obsessions are often a week long. I also thought that other people might have similar obsessions. I’ve collected a panel of a few like-minded individuals and gotten their “song obsessions of the week.” Quite often it’s easy to explain why the song is good; it’s much hard to explain why we’re obsessed. Maybe you’ll become obsessed with one of these.

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I saw 43 bands in 4 days last week. When I wasn’t at shows, I was sleeping or eating or blogging. A lot of that time was spent listening to An Horse’s album Rearrange Beds for whatever reason. Though not the best song on the album, “Little Lungs” is the one that would stick in my head a couple hours…until I saw a live band at least. I like the tension in the first half that releases into a nice build to a loud part near the end. Basically, give the song a couple minutes before you judge it.

As I said, the band that most changed my opinion of them at SxSW was Mumford & Sons. They put on a great set and that made me re-evaluate their recorded music. I’ve been listening to their stuff quite a lot since I got back and this is the song that most sticks in my head. (Too bad I won’t be able to ever play it on the radio due to all the FCC violations.)

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I try not to align myself with the slobbering Neko Case fanboys searching for symbolism in the cover of her new disc (is that a COUGAR sheâ€™s perched upon?) â€“ but this new effort is big-time obsessive-worthy. My wife quipped that â€œshe sounds like Kirsty MacCollâ€ during our shared commute last week. My response â€“ â€œThatâ€™s not a problem â€“ thatâ€™s an ASSET.â€ I do sorta wish she did some Hall and Oates covers though.

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Caught Love Language at SXSW and they are my favorite band of the moment. Their self-titled debut album, released earlier this year, is a low-fi masterpiece. If memory serves, the lead singer recorded in his house and played every instrument.

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This song came to me via H. Hirway’s twitter account. I had not previously heard Eulogies, but I like Hrishi, and generally trust his taste in music, so I decided to give it a listen. It’s a very nice piano/voice/reverb tune with just a touch of guitar to fill in around the edges. It started getting plays simply because it was on my work computer’s desktop, and was easy to load, but after a few listens, the melody started to stick – “Hope you find me // If I try to run away” ran through my head about a thousand times. If that doesn’t qualify as an obsession, I’ve got nothing.